Calculate your total weekly training volume by muscle group — sets, reps, tonnage, and more.
Add each exercise you perform in a typical week, selecting the target muscle group, number of sets, average reps per set, and the weight lifted. Hit Calculate Volume to instantly see your total weekly tonnage (total load), working sets per muscle group, and how your volume stacks up against evidence-based recommendations.
You can log multiple exercises targeting the same muscle group — the tool aggregates everything automatically.
Training volume — the total amount of work you perform — is arguably the most important driver of muscle hypertrophy and strength adaptation. Too little, and you won't stimulate sufficient growth. Too much, and you risk overtraining, injury, and burnout. Getting the balance right matters enormously.
Research by Brad Schoenfeld, Mike Israetel, and others suggests that most natural lifters benefit from 10–20 working sets per muscle group per week for hypertrophy. Beginners can see gains at just 5–10 sets/week, while advanced trainees may push to 20–25 sets for some muscles. Strength-focused athletes typically operate at lower volumes (3–8 sets) with heavier loads. Weekly tonnage — total weight lifted across all sets and reps — gives you an objective measure to track progress over time.
Tracking volume also helps you balance your program. Many lifters over-train pushing muscles (chest, shoulders, triceps) while under-training pulling muscles (back, rear delts, biceps) — a recipe for postural issues and shoulder injuries.
Weekly Tonnage (per exercise): Sets × Reps × Weight (kg or lb)
Total Weekly Sets (per muscle): Sum of all sets across all exercises targeting that muscle group
Volume Load Index: Total tonnage summed across all exercises
Volume zones are based on published guidelines: Low = under 10 sets/muscle/week, Optimal = 10–20 sets, High = 21–25 sets, Very High = 25+ sets.
Research suggests 10–20 working sets per muscle group per week is the "sweet spot" for most natural lifters pursuing hypertrophy. Beginners can see excellent results at 5–10 sets. Advanced lifters may temporarily use 20–30 sets during accumulation phases, but this requires careful recovery management.
Yes — higher rep sets with lighter weight can generate similar or greater hypertrophic stimulus than lower rep sets with heavy weight, but total tonnage will differ significantly. For comparing volume across rep ranges, sets-per-muscle is a more reliable metric than raw tonnage. Use tonnage primarily to track load progression over time.
Yes, partially. A bench press counts primarily toward chest volume, but also contributes to shoulder and triceps volume. When adding exercises, choose the primary muscle group — many coaches recommend counting compound exercises as 1 full set for the primary muscle and 0.5 sets for secondaries, though this tool uses whole sets for simplicity.
Volume refers to the total amount of work (sets × reps × load), while intensity refers to the load relative to your maximum (expressed as %1RM). A high-volume program (many sets, moderate reps) differs from a high-intensity program (few sets, heavy loads). Effective programs balance both across training phases.